antiboredom101

Test run:

The Postal Service


30 Seconds To Mars


My Starving Lion


On a professionally detailed level, what producing/effects similarities can be pointed out by listening to these three similar "sounding" groups?
What do you pros think? Are they using the same stuff? what are they using?

As mentioned before, I do allot of genre naming(dubbing)
for personal and professional reasons. (it's a side job)

So in the world of sound mixing, which I am only limited in experience.
Can active preamps, plugins, compressors...etc
be accurately pinpointed by listening to a finished
track by an artist or group without actually contacting
the studio?

What I'm getting at is putting together a list that finds common
points between genres and their sound recording/producing
mastering processes. Including any commonalties in audio-programs,
mics, effects(tweaking, inverting..etc).

Basically, an extremely detailed "producers/engineers genre tuning" list.

I think once complete, this could be a useful quick reference tool to
focus an artist to a genre and/or find a way
to label an eclectic artist. It would also give producers a tool
to make their process more effective in achieving "this sound" or "that sound".

Would putting something like this together help "dubb" artists/genres more effectively?

Freebase Dali

I think that would depend... unless a particular piece of gear has a very distinct and obvious characteristic, it'd be pretty hard to pull that off. On top of that, you'd probably have to be pretty familiar with the particular gear as well.
Personally, I use a ton of different compressor plugins for different things, and even the best of them don't really have a distinguishable characteristic in terms of native sound, not to mention being able to hear it in the mix. Compression techniques, on the other hand, are a different story. For instance, it's very easy to spot when an engineer side-chain compresses heavily, using a kick drum as a trigger. And that happens to be a very popular technique in Electronic music.

Some microphones have very distinct characteristics that people can recognize, but usually they're people who have extensive experience with those mics. I guess the same could be true about preamps and such, but I doubt your average listener is going to have any luck pinpointing which they are.

Again, I think you'll have better luck spotting production techniques across genres than spotting equipment used, but I'm sure you can find resources around the web and track down gear-specific stuff. One way might be to find out who produces an artist's albums, who mixes them, masters them, etc... and see if you can find who they work for and maybe check out their website and see the gear yourself. Just an idea.

antiboredom101

Wow, thanks!

So in your opinion, would an organized network that set out to collect the detailed data I am speaking of, have a market to sell this as a finished product?

Like a network that recording studios/engineers/producers would join and submit detailed data to be accessed by licensed/regonized stuidos in the network for a fee.

I can understand what you are saying, but calling and viewing each specific artist/studio would be quite an effort. Ive contacted a few artists and labels.(My Starving Lion and After Eight) got back to me as they are fairly new and still accessible. The others, i'm still waiting on. All my questions were answered actually by After Eight and its recording engineer. But afterwards, I looked down my list of current studios/artist to contact and I nearly passed out.

They of course offered insight on what other artist "like them" are "possibly" using to their best guess but you cant do anything official off of "possibly".

Do you know of any industry pro's that would join/help with a project like this?

Freebase Dali

To be honest, I'm not sure you could market something like that as a product, and to be even more honest, I don't think many recording engineers would like the idea of their trade secrets being sold off to potential competition.
In reality, though, what we're really talking about is recording, mixing and mastering techniques that are learned through years of experience by anyone worth his or her salt in the recording business. It's not something that can really be packaged up and effectively transferred with any more (or better) results than budding engineers learning these things on their own, and formulating their own methodology that lends something to themselves as engineers that have something of their own to offer their clients or productions.

Also, a ton of essential knowledge is readily available throughout the internet, books, guides, tutorials, you name it. And on top of this, a lot of producers these days are putting in work in home studios from start to finish and releasing on their own, completely bypassing traditional studio involvement... In an already much-less studio-centric world than in the past, I'm not sure traditional studios would want to contribute more to that.

antiboredom101

I can dig that.

I do see what you mean. From my standpoint, providing the industry with insight is a product of mine in a way. I guess thinking in that mode turns average passing thoughts into an above average "product". In my head of course.

After giving consideration to the inital idea, I think that some form of this might be of production (money gains) use if done on a tight collaboration of producers for some type of educational institution. In this case would give recgonition to only a select few. Which I am sure, to some extent, has been already done. It might just be an idea for an additional teaching tool for an already existing teaching curriculum creation practice.



No matter, thanks for helping me sift through that thought!

antiboredom101

*edit

fixed the links